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A big take here is how similar are the brains of almost all animals in existence. It's not only parasites, you also have viruses. Rabies, for example, manipula
by AshamedCaptain 4y ago
A big take here is how similar are the brains of almost all animals in existence.
It's not only parasites, you also have viruses. Rabies, for example, manipulates the brain to induce what to me appears to be a highly specific response to a very specific thing : hydrophobia (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabies#Signs_and_symptoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabies#Signs_and_symptoms , in particular the video).
And it induces the _same_ symptoms on a huge chunk of mammalian species. For all you think the human brain is different from that of say, a wild fox, the same mechanism used by this virus to introduce hydrophobia _works_ on both species' brains.
It's already amazing to me that you can manipulate different human brains in the same way and introduce such a specific response; the idea that it would even extend to different species... If you believe even for a second that brains work in any way like a neural network, this is just mind-boggling. How can you manipulate a neural network to suddenly fear water? How can you manipulate _different types of neural networks_ to suddenly fear water, in a generic way? You/the parasite/the virus can only influence the hardware/wetware, and not what the NN is trained on.
It's evident that it's not an easy task, not even for the virus itself, as it "fails" to work on around 20% of the infected, as per the wikipedia article, where it causes some strange lethargic behavior instead of the "intended" waterphobia. ("Intented" because it's definitely more likely to cause the virus to propagate than the lethargic behavior).
- tgv 4y agoWell, the brain is not a back-prop NN, that's obvious. It's also obvious that a part of it is pre-wired for essential "life support", such as generating a heart beat, breathing, walking, sucking, etc. It's interesting to consider how deeply instinctive our knowledge of water is, but since our lives depend on it, I suppose quite deep, and thus related to that of other mammals.
- Mattasher 4y ago> How can you manipulate a neural network to suddenly fear water? How can you manipulate _different types of neural networks_ to suddenly fear water, in a generic way? These kinds of reactions, and the many hyper-specific adaptations across the animal kingdom, make me think our current model of life lacks the entropy required to account for the behavior we see. It's like in a movie when they tell the geek to do some highly complex and customized task, and he clicks a couple keys and it's done.
- pessimizer 4y ago> Rabies, for example, manipulates the brain I'm not sure that's a brain manipulation, but rather rabies making it traumatically painful to swallow, mixed with a tortuously deep thirst.
- ceejayoz 4y agoIt's more than that. See this rather disturbing video of someone with rabies trying to take a drink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtiytblJzQc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtiytblJzQc
- krageon 4y agoThey do not just try, they succeed. It's disturbing because you can be sure this is a person who is dead now (and this was the process of them dying), but being able to take a drink is impressive.